On the Swiss Minaret Ban

If you’re not following your Swiss religious news (I’m sure most of you are, of course), it falls to me to report to you that the Swiss, in a referendum upset, surprised virtually everyone by passing overwhelmingly (with 57.6% of the vote, and the support of 22 of Switzerland’s 26 cantons) a ban on the construction of any new Muslim minarets . If you’re not familiar, the minaret is the prayer tower which announces when it’s time to pray — it serves almost an identical function to the Christian bell tower, in fact, and a number of Spanish churches have bell towers which were once minarets.

I was discussing this news with Husein, a friend of mine from a Muslim family, to try and figure out what to make of it. The best I can tell, the Swiss realize that their (Christian) culture is dying, but rather than addressing the causes of their cultural decline (their loss of faith), they’re attacking a convenient target: Muslim immigrants who actually believe in their religion. This vote seems to have passed because of the convergence of two unwholesome forces – anti-religiosity on the left, anti-immigration fears on the right – coupled with the special War on Terror era fears of Islam which elements of both sides possess.

What’s Wrong with the World, a blog dedicated “to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ,” notes a trend: Swiss voters, when polled, claimed that they were against the minaret ban, but then voted for it. There’s an interesting US parallel right now: there were 17 state senators who spoke on New York’s gay marriage bill. 16 spoke in favor of it, only one stood up against it. The bill, surprisingly, lost. This signals that those who believe in politically incorrect ideas are being shouted down and intimidated to the point where they don’t feel comfortable revealing their true colors even to pollsters. But significantly, they’re not being persuaded — they’re just going with the movement of the P.C. culture. That’s a trend activists on both sides should take note of. Is it enough to shout down opponents, or should there be moves to change hearts and minds? Are politically incorrect ideas okay to bring to the table? WWwtW readers also noted another worrying trend: of letting people vote on referendums, and then immediately taking the results to court to be overruled if the masses vote “wrong.” We’re already seeing this in California, where Prop 8 is being litigated over for allegedly being unconstitutional.

On the whole, though, GetReligion has better coverage on this, particularly here and here. In the latter story, they address one of the aspects which I originally mentioned to Husein: the Swiss passed this because they claim that the minarets in Switzerland are being built by radical Saudis (no idea if this is true or not). This immediately should remind us of the religious situation in Saudi Arabia. It’s the only Persian Gulf country which completely bans Christian houses of worship, and most of its neighbors allow Christian churches only if they have no bell towers, crosses, or outwardly visible symbols. As shocked as the world was over the Swiss move, the Muslim indignation (captured quite well in quotes in that second GetReligion link) should hopefully spur on some domestic dialogues throughout the Islamic world about the appropriate respect to be shown other religions. It doesn’t sell for Saudi Muslims to complain about what a slap in the face it is, when they have much more rigid rules.

That said, the Swiss behavior here is pretty inexcusable. Husein rightly notes that the Swiss nation-state is set up to be a liberal democracy, not a theocratic kingdom like Saudi Arabia, so even if the Saudis don’t have much room to complain, the Swiss should be setting a positive example of vaguely-Christian democracy, rather than lowering themselves to passing Saudi-type laws in reverse. Besides that, there’s little likelihood that this was passed as a foreign policy maneuver towards the Saudi (and even if it were, it only harms Swiss Muslims, not Saudi Muslims). Much more likely, it’s just a middle finger towards the newest immigrants, a way of letting them know that their kind isn’t welcome.

From a religious standpoint, this whole minaret ban has been nonsense. Swiss Christians have much more to fear from European secularists than they do from Swiss Muslims, and this law if flatly an invasion on religious practice. It’s intended to be. It’s also not effective in saving souls. Swiss Muslims are still free to practice their faith, to convert, and so on, just not to have minarets — in any case, there were only 4 minarets in the entire country, so this has all the weight which, say, banning National Basilicas in the US would. Besides that, by pushing Muslims away from mainstream Swiss society, you’re ensuring that Swiss-based Muslims grow up in Muslim neighborhoods where they feel rejected by the Swiss mainstream. Look at how successful persecuted Christianity is: in ancient Rome, in modern China, and in the Catholic Ghettos in the US at the start of the 20th century. It almost always grows like wildfire. Then look at what happens when religious communities get sucked into the mainstream: they decline and fade out. Assimilating Swiss Muslims would mean that they go from being (say) Syrian Muslims in Switzerland, to being Swiss Muslims, to being Swiss who happen to be Muslim: a gradual process of becoming more Swiss and less Muslim (note, I’m not advocating secularism as superior to Islam here, but that process can, at times, help open the possibility of Christian conversion). The minaret ban did the opposite: it made Swiss Muslims less Swiss. It also just placed a huge hurdle in the way of any Christian missionary trying to reach out to these Muslims.